"Do you choose being right or being happy? I've had people come back months later and say, 'I hated you for asking me that question – but it changed my life.'"
~~ Professor and counselor Gay Hendricks

Dear friends,

The below thought-provoking essay is the best I've seen for healing challenging relationships in our lives through breaking the addiction to blame. It can be applied to individual relationships with family and intimate partners, as well as to those with groups and organizations at the national and global levels.

If you are interested in living a richer, fuller life and having deeper connections with those around you, don't miss this profound essay. And for an excellent online lesson which dives deep into these issues, click here. Take care and have a meaningful day.

With very best wishes for a transformed world,Fred Burks for the PEERS empowerment websites

The Chemistry of BlameBy Gay Hendricks

There is a great fundamental issue that overrides many of the
things we can do to heal ourselves and the world: the human
tendency to step into feeling like a victim and blaming others,
instead of taking personal responsibility.

It's not just a habit; it's an addiction, just like a chemical addiction.
When you step into the victim position by pointing the finger of
blame, you short the circuitry in yourself that allows you to feel the
natural organic ecstasy of fully standing in a co-creative position with
the universe itself. That's the fundamental developmental task we
face at this stage of our evolution: opening up the wiring that allows
us to feel organic ecstasy for longer and longer periods of time.

At present, most people can't sustain the feelings that arise with
this opening, so they slip into a dangerous addiction to blame with its
corresponding feeling of a gleeful gotcha! Once we're accustomed to
a certain internal chemical state, we feel comfortable with that state
even if it's attached to really dysfunctional behavior like that glee that
arises from apportioning blame.

When we try new behavior and our
neurochemistry changes, it feels uncomfortable at first. Moving to a
new emotional and biochemical state may feel foreign. Even though
it may be a healthier one, it is unfamiliar.

Usually in couples therapy, the first issue to be addressed is: Are
you willing to make a commitment to solving the problem? One of
the most typical responses is, "Well, I'd be committed if she were."
It takes about an hour and a half of discussion to work through that
objection, until at some point in the process, both people bond and
turn on the leader.

I tell my students that those are the only moments
during which you're earning your keep as a therapist. Both members
of the couple turn to you and say, "Hey, what the hell are you suggesting
here? Are you suggesting that it's not his fault?" That's always
a sweaty moment, but it's the instant when transformation can come. Once you're through that issue, the possibility of getting out of the
field of blame and actually taking responsibility opens up.

"Are you willing to stay completely away
from blaming anyone, and instead make a sincere
commitment to resolving all the issues we
confront?" I've asked that question of thousands
of people, many of whom had traveled great
distances to visit to me, or were paying me very
large sums of money.

Even with stakes that high,
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the person goes into the default
position of blame immediately. Weaning people from that automatic
behavior takes a great deal of patience and repetition, and a nimble
set of therapeutic interventions.

The tendency to default to blame is the huge issue confronting
couples and societies today. Wherever you see it appear, that's the
area where healing is needed. There's only one solution, and that's to
take 100% impeccable responsibility – and create a space for the other
person to take 100% impeccable responsibility as well. Responsibility
has a contagious effect.

The initial level of responsibility is going from
blame to being willing to consider what you're getting out of – or
contributing to – the problem. Senior level responsibility is being so
impeccably clear that you become a space into which it's possible for
other people to step.

You then have to confront a person's despair that the problem
is not solvable, which is always accompanied by about fifteen levels
of justification. But when both people have made a commitment to
resolving the issue, 90% of the work is done. Both people have then
stepped into a co-creative role with not only the other, but with the
Universe itself.

A particular couple comes to mind. They came to work with my
wife and me on their relationship. Both partners were Ph.D.s who had
written brilliant scholarly papers, but when either of them encountered
anything they perceived as a threat, their academic, intellectual
understanding flew out the window, and they immediately became
convinced that they knew that the other person was wrong.

The first thing that we did was to repeatedly ask them if they
would be willing to take responsibility for healing, and to make a
commitment to solving the issues. When confronted with the question,
they would spin out and become more entrenched in the position
that it was the other person's fault. They had endless justifications for
this certainty, and thus continually dosed themselves with this highly
addictive drug.

It took all of the first day and well into the night to produce a shift,
but in the middle of the night, the husband couldn't sleep. His anxiety
got worse and worse. In a state of desperation, he said, "Okay, I'm
willing to commit to solving this problem." That created a space for
the wife to commit to the same thing. The next morning, they came in
willing to solve the problem.

In a nutshell, the problem was that she had had a sexual affair
and he couldn't forgive her. They'd gone 'round and 'round with it for
the better part of a year. On the second day of therapy, the reason he
couldn't get over it became really clear.

One of the questions that I commonly ask people is, "Has anything
like this ever happened to you or anyone you know?" At first the husband
said, "No," but then, as we got deeper into
the question, it turned out not only was the real
answer, "Yes," but his entire early life had been
shaped by his mother running off with another
man and leaving his dad with four little boys to
raise.

It was inevitable that his wife's infidelity,
or something like it, was bound to happen to
him, because he had it so thoroughly sealed off this early experience.

When we seal something off from our consciousness inside, it has to
be brought to our attention in some way by the outside world. Suddenly, he realized that his wife was illuminating this old
experience, and he said to her, "Oh, you played this role in my life
for me." At the end of the second day they were in each other's arms.

She said, "This was inevitable. I had to play this role for you." And
he responded, "Yes, this was my bad dream you wandered into." He
asked her, "Can you forgive me, for getting you involved in this nutty
scheme of my unconscious?" That couple represented one of the best
examples I've ever seen of what's possible when both people take
responsibility.

There are a lot of programmed-in and even biologically-based
characteristics that make human males and females different. I'm interested in what's underneath that. The deeper you go inside, the
more human beings look alike. The further you go toward the surface,
the more different we look. The fear a woman feels when she's upset
about the guy not picking up his socks corresponds to the fear the
man feels when he's upset that she's on his case. The superficial differences
point to some underlying unity.

To deal with these situations, we voice our fears, then look underneath
them. As a therapist, I point out repeatedly, "Okay, having said
that your husband is a worthless piece of shit, tune inside. Do you feel
happier?" The person begins to recognize that although they feel that
"glee-gotcha" feeling that comes from assigning blame, they don't
feel happier.

So I help people make choices about whether something
can make them feel happy, rather than just gleeful, by inviting
them to make tiny choices that are actually huge choices. I say, "Do
you choose being right or being happy?" I've had people come back
months later and say, "I hated you for asking me that question – but
it changed my life."

And here's the great advantage of asking this question: we each
only have to make the choice once. That choice changes the whole
playing field. Afterwards, it's simply a matter of practice. It's similar
to getting on a bicycle for the first time. You travel ten feet, then
wobble and fall over. You get back on and you master going twenty
feet. The first time was the moment in which everything changed.

It's the same with mastering personal responsibility. Once a person
shifts out of glee and experiences the real joy of
claiming responsibility, everything is changed. They're launched into the process of learning. How do they remember that they're in that
process and trigger that experience on a regular
basis in everyday life? By discovering how great they feel when they
do it, and how miserable they feel when they don't.

Twenty-five years ago Kathlyn and I knew we wanted to create
something different with our marriage. We looked around to find
other couples to model our behavior on, but we found nobody whose
relationship we would have traded for our own. We had to make
up our path ourselves.

It took a long time, but now it's been the better
part of a decade since my wife or I have said one critical thing to
each other. It's years since I've experienced blame, since I've had that
chemistry in my body. I am past the point where I ever want that
drug, because I feel good, and I don't want to bring myself down. We
are living in that clear space of impeccable responsibility that offers
the possibility for other people to step into it. We choose to be happy.
It's easy now.

Note: Gay Hendricks is the author or co-author of 25 books in
conscious relationship, conscious business, and body-mind transformation.
Included are such enduring bestsellers as Conscious Loving
and Conscious Living. Before founding his own institute, Gay was a professor of counseling at the
University of Colorado.

Over the 24 years of their relationship, he and
his wife Kathlyn have raised two children, accumulated a million frequent flyer
miles and appeared on more than 500 radio and TV programs. See his empowering website at www.hendricks.com. The above is an edited excerpt from a compilation of essays in the book The Marriage of Sex & Spirit, edited by Geralyn Gendreau.

For an excellent, inspiring online lesson which dives deep into these issues, click here.